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Tag: Barack Obama

Kelly skeptical, Gallego mum on Trump defense pick – Fox News host Pete Hegseth – who lacks national security experience

Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly was among the combat veterans and Democrats expressing deep skepticism at Donald Trump’s choice of a defense secretary with no national security experience.

“Typically you expect someone in that role to have implemented or made policy – defense policy,” Kelly, a Navy combat pilot, said Wednesday of the president-elect’s pick, conservative Fox News host Pete Hegseth.

Resumes of defense secretaries in recent decades included stints as CIA director, secretary of the Army and White House chief of staff. Hegseth has no high-level defense or national security experience, though his crusade against “woke” military policies endeared him to Trump.

He wants women removed from combat roles opened to them in 2015 under former President Barack Obama and blames a focus on gender equality and other liberal goals for weakening the U.S. security.

Senate Democrats don’t see such views as sufficient qualification.

“We’re going to get an opportunity here in the Armed Services Committee to ask him some very pointed questions,” Kelly told Cronkite News at the Capitol. “I’d never even heard of him. … I read somewhere that he spent nine years as a TV host.”

Senate confirmation requires only a simple majority, and Republicans will control at least 53 seats.

Arizona’s senator-elect, U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego, also a Democrat – and a Marine who served in Iraq as an infantryman – declined to discuss the nomination, brushing aside questions from Cronkite News reporters at the House.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican who is not on Armed Services, was noncommittal.

“With all of President Trump’s nominees we’ll assess them on their merits. We look forward to the confirmation hearings and to the process proceeding swiftly.”

The Pentagon chief oversees the government’s largest agency, with 1.3 million active duty personnel plus more than twice that many civilians and National Guard.

But experience isn’t apparently what drew Trump to his nominee.

“Pete has spent his entire life as a Warrior for the Troops, and for the Country,” Trump posted on social media. “Pete will be a courageous and patriotic champion of our ‘Peace through Strength’ policy.”

Hegseth earned two Bronze Stars during infantry deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and rose to major in the Army National Guard. He served as CEO for Concerned Veterans for America, a conservative group. He studied at Princeton and earned a master in public policy from Harvard.

“The Left wants to destroy the one institution standing between them and total control – the United States military,” he wrote in a New York Times bestseller published in June, titled “The War on Warriors: Behind the Betrayal of the Men Who Keep Us Free.”

Hegseth has demanded the firing of Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. for “pursuing the radical positions of left-wing politicians.”

In his book, he blames liberals’ demands for “gender equity, racial diversity, climate stupidity, and the LGBTQA+ alphabet soup” for making it hard to recruit “the young, patriotic, Christian men who have traditionally filled our ranks.”

Trump’s two previous defense secretaries were far more experienced.

James Mattis – who resigned less than two years into the job after Trump announced he would pull U.S. troops out of Syria – was a retired Marine general who had led U.S. Central Command, responsible for operations in the Middle East.

His successor, Mark Esper, served as secretary of the Army under Trump and had been a deputy assistant secretary of defense under George W. Bush.

The current secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, served 41 years in uniform, retiring from the Army as a four-star general. Like Mattis, he had led Central Command.

“I’m going to be asking questions about his management experience,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, told Cronkite News. “Our United States military deserves the very best of our managerial talent.”

Other Cabinet picks have also stirred controversy, among them Trump’s nomination Wednesday of Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz for attorney general.

Gaetz is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over allegations of sex trafficking, sex with minors and illicit drug use, which he has denied. Like Trump, Gaetz has been investigated by the Department of Justice. The department he would lead if confirmed opted not to pursue charges.

One common thread among the Cabinet picks so far is staunch loyalty to Trump.

Lee Zeldin, a former New York congressman tapped to lead the EPA, was an avid defender during Trump’s impeachment trials. So was South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, his pick for Homeland Security secretary.

As part of his book rollout, Hegseth revealed that leaders of his National Guard unit excluded him from duty protecting President Joe Biden’s inauguration Jan. 20, 2021, having “deemed that I was an extremist or a white nationalist.” That, he said, was because of a tattoo of a “Jerusalem cross,” a symbol that dates to 11th Century Crusaders.

Washington correspondents Lauren Bly, Miguel Ambriz and Madeline Nguyen contributed to this report.

For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.

Federal judge rejects purge of 1.2 Million voters but grants access to voter records

A federal judge late Friday ordered Secretary of State Adrian Fontes to turn over records he is required by law to have about his obligation to maintain accurate voter rolls.

But U.S. District Court Judge Steven Logan, originally appointed by then-President Barack Obama, refused to order Fontes to immediately strip 1.2 million voters from the registration list as requested by Citizen AG which calls itself a voter education group. The judge said even if he had that right to alter voter registration rolls – and he said he doesn’t – the organization’s claim that many people who are on the list who shouldn’t be allowed to cast a ballot is, at this point “wholly speculative.”

Attorney Alexander Kolodin, who represents Citizen AG, said the ruling is still a victory.

He said once the records are produced – the judge gave Fontes until Dec. 2 to comply – that will give his client a chance to prove the merits of its assertion of poorly maintained voter rolls. And that, said Kolodin, could provide the basis for a future challenge to the rolls, even if that can’t occur until after next week’s election.

“We are pleased that the court ordered the records the secretary has been unlawfully withholding released so that Citizen AG will have the documents it needs to ensure that Arizona’s voter rolls are cleaned up,” he told Capitol Media Services.

But Kolodin, a Republican state representative from Scottsdale, also took a political swat at Fontes, a Democrat.

“It is obviously difficult to prove a claim when the secretary has been withholding just those records which reveal the depths of his incompetence and malfeasance,” he said.

A spokesman for Fontes would not comment on the ruling but said that the office would comply.

At the heart of the lawsuit is the claim that there are ineligible people on the rolls.

Karen Hartman-Tellez, an assistant attorney general representing Fontes, told the judge at Friday’s hearing there is no evidence to back up the allegation. Still, she acknowledged that she cannot say for sure how many people who either no longer live in Arizona or have died may be registered to vote.

Whatever is the answer could turn on what is in those records.

Both state and federal law require election officials to send out notices when there is evidence that a registered voter has moved. At that point that person is placed on the “inactive” list.

The individual can reactivate simply by showing up at a polling place with proof of identification and address. But if that person does not vote in two subsequent elections, he or she is removed entirely from the voter rolls.

Citizen AG contends that based on data it has, there are 1.2 million Arizonans who were placed on the inactive list after the 2022 election but have not been permanently removed. It argued that failure to do so diluted the votes of those legally entitled to cast ballots.

Logan said that claim is based on “uncertain intervening events” that ineligible voters are on the rolls, that they are afforded an opportunity to vote, that they did vote, and that nothing would be done to prevent it.

“The court finds this claim of possibilities to speculate to establish a concrete injury,” he wrote, something necessary for standing to file suit in federal court.

And the judge was not about to order Fontes to remove 1.2 million names from the inactive voter list.

He said that claim is based on numbers in other reports the state furnishes to the federal Elections Assistance Commission. But that, said Logan, is not enough.

“Plaintiffs do not have any independent data to support the claim that over 1.2 million inactive and ineligible voters remain on the Arizona voter rolls,” the judge wrote. What they have at this point, is “wholly speculative.”

Anyway, he pointed out that the NVRA itself forbids the wholesale removal of individuals from voter rolls within 90 days of an election.

The records Citizen AG wants, however, are another matter.

At Friday’s hearing, Hartman-Tellez complained about the timing of all this. She told the judge Citizen AG could have sought the documents after the 2022 election but didn’t file a public records request until Oct. 4 – and didn’t go to court until this past Wednesday, less than a week before the election, after Fontes said he didn’t have what the organization wanted.

That didn’t impress Logan, who said there is a “clear statutory right to inspect certain records.” Nor was he swayed by arguments that it would be too much of a burden to force Fontes to produce them.

“That difficult has no bearing on Citizen AG’s right to receive the records, whether they had made such a request two years ago (on Nov. 9, 2022, when plaintiffs contend the state of Arizona should have cleaned up its voter rolls) or six days before the election,” he said. “The law is the law, even on the even of an election.”

The judge, however, agreed to give Fontes until Dec. 2 to comply.

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